For new Museum of Fine Arts director Matthew Teitelbaum, these are the getting-to-know-you days. It’s the first time in 20 years the Museum of Fine Arts has a new director. Teitelbaum arrived at the MFA in August from The Art Gallery of Ontario which he’d led for the past 17 years. Taking in the MFA, he’s not exactly a stranger in a strange land, having been a curator at the ICA back in the early '90s. But he concedes he has a lot to learn.
Teitelbaum says he’s getting to know this collection by walking around the galleries a lot and spending a lot of time with curators and saying, “Why is that interesting?,” “Why are you interested in this old stuff?”
Teitelbaum is a study in understatement. Exceedingly polite, he asks if it’s okay to tweet my picture before our interview. When it comes to technology, he’s relaxed, he says.
“When I see technology, it takes the visitor back to the object and engages them so that they’re having an experience with the object, I think, 'Great!'” he said.
And as far as audience participation goes, Titlebaum is generally pro art-selfie.
“I feel two things — one is I think it’s great," he said. "One is the affirmation of self, all great. Uh, but I’m frustrated when that’s the endgame of the experience. So I say, 'Okay, what can we do to create a connection?'"
If ever there was a time for art appreciation, it’s now, Teitelbaum says, after the recent murder of an archaeologist and destruction of ancient monuments by ISIS.
“If we can get into a conversation about why we care for these objects and how they’ve come from where they originated to here, we can start talking about cultural identity, cultural migration,” he said.
The son of an artist, Teitelbaum grew up to be a champion of them — and will continue to be at the MFA.
“I’ve been quite clear — I don’t see us creating more contemporary spaces and taking over galleries," he said. "I mean that, that I don’t think we need. But I do think we need to find an additional platform for contemporary artists — that might be the occasional platform in the galleries, it might be stumbling upon contemporary art in places that are a bit unexpected.”
There will be no immediate or radical changes in the museum’s future or in Teitelbaum himself, he says. It’s simply not his style.
“I don’t gravitate towards the word 'provocative' — it just doesn’t interest me particularly," he said. "I would hope that people looked at me and said that I was values-driven, that I understood what it meant for this institution to be great.”
And all done, with a new, if unofficial, title. “I’m the enthusiast-in-chief,” he says. “I’m the priority setter. I’m person who’s pushing ambition. But I want the people who I work with to be the true advocates.”
